She had grit, Evangeline did, that was for sure. Moreover, her mind was excellent; he could tell that by the way she spoke and carried herself. Maybe, he speculated silently, she’d like to borrow some of the books he’d collected over the years, and they could talk about the characters and the stories and the mostly unfamiliar settings. There was no dishonor in that, was there? Just talking with a woman, even if she was soon to be another man’s wife?

“Sit down, Scully,” she said, scattering his thoughts like so many squawking chickens splashed with water from the dishpan. “I made up a hash with potatoes and onions and some canned meat from the pantry. There’s coffee, too.”

Scully felt a peculiar leap somewhere between his heart and his belly, a purely primitive response that he feared had nothing much to do with being hungry and everything to do with having nobody to talk to for long stretches of time. “What about you?” he asked, drawing back one of Big John’s mismatched chairs to take a seat. “Aren’t you having anything?”

“I ate with Abigail,” she said, moving close to the table to fill his mug with hot, fragrant coffee. The ordinary courtesy brought on a feeling of nostalgia so intense that Scully didn’t trust himself to speak again for the next little while. He merely nodded his thanks, hoping that would suffice to convey his gratitude, though he’d been taught better manners at his mother’s table, back home in Virginia.

The hash was uncommonly tasty, considering how fast she’d put it together, and that only deepened Scully’s sudden sense of being separate and apart from a happier world, where women cooked meals for their men, and sought to please them in gentle and ordinary ways. Somewhere up in the foothills, a coyote howled, a fitting sound, given how he was feeling just then.

She returned the coffeepot to the stove, then drew back the second chair and sat facing Scully, her hands folded on the tabletop. “I’d like to thank you, Mr.—Scully—for fetching Abigail and me from the stagecoach station. And for keeping us safe from those Indians. We couldn’t possibly have made the journey on our own.” She paused and shivered, no doubt imagining herself and her daughter as captives of the Chippewa.

It was true enough, Scully thought, that a woman needed a man out in this country, but it was equally true that a man needed a woman. Without one, the hardships and the loneliness sometimes seemed almost beyond bearing. He shrugged, a little raw from plumbing so deeply into feelings he normally didn’t acknowledge, even to himself. “Big John said you’d be getting to Springwater around this time, give or take a day or so. He asked me to bring you home.”

She looked a little disappointed in his answer, though he didn’t know what he’d said wrong. You could never tell with women; they could be real touchy, even when a man took care choosing his words and framed them just so. “I see,” she answered, in a tone indicating that she didn’t see at all.